Limited by its stock cooling solution, the $550 PC still reaches a moderate 3.40 GHz CPU overclock. Larger coolers and newer core technologies enable higher frequencies, such as the $1000 system’s 4.40 GHz at 1.30 V and the $2000 build’s 4.80 GHz at 1.40 V. Low-budget builder Paul Henningsen relied on reduced latencies to boost his system’s memory performance, while the high-end build used higher frequencies for similar purposes.

Perhaps the most extreme technique for extracting additional performance, $1000 system builder Don Woligroski flashed the BIOS of his single Radeon HD 6950 graphics card to HD 6970 GPU specifications, though its memory didn’t support the full clock rate of the higher-model card.

Could you please do an EU/UK SBM at some point? It's all very well looking at these to help decisions for our builds, but there can be big differences in relative pricing over here. It would, if nothing else, be an interesting comparision, plus you could run the giveaway open to us folks this side of the pond for a change...